


The Agony of Being Other People

by Rocamadour



Series: Soul Mates [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:36:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rocamadour/pseuds/Rocamadour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In some lifetimes, Grantaire finds him.<br/>In others, he doesn’t.<br/>He wonders how many times they’re going to do this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Agony of Being Other People

When Grantaire recognises him, Enjolras is wearing a red coat and talking about revolution. Grantaire thinks about sun light and cold marble but he feels himself burning with desire. A fire he cannot smother with wine but he keeps trying anyway. 

The first time Grantaire loved Enjolras, Enjolras didn’t love him back. 

\-- 

The second time Grantaire finds him; Enjolras is a woman and her hair is long and red. Her face is full of freckles and Grantaire wonders what took him so long to realise she’s Enjolras. 

Perhaps it is the fact that she is a lady and she is married to some foolish British lord. 

Or the fact that she isn’t interested in politics. She’s such a bourgeois that Grantaire has to stop himself from laughing at unexpected moments – but the spark is still there.  
She’s fire, in the absolute sense of the expression. He watches her as she dances her way through a royal ball and it just hits him. That passion, those glances, the little smiles that mean trouble – that’s Enjolras.

“How come we didn’t meet before?” she asks him one rainy afternoon, both of them naked in his bed. “My first years of marriage would have been so much better with you there”  
“Perhaps” he says after giving her a kiss “I could have marry you instead”

It doesn’t really matter after all. 

They run off to Spain and get fake identities. Grantaire doesn’t really like the country – the weather is hot and he’s always afraid some Spanish brute is going to capture Enjolras interest, but Enjolras is always smiling and dancing and wearing provocative dresses just for him. 

They manage just fine until Enjolras former husband finds them and things get pretty ugly. 

Grantaire learns that is not a good idea to have a duel with someone who is well trained with the sword.  
Enjolras learns not to give her heart so freely because men are mortal and sometimes love mixes up with death. 

\- -

“I wish my life would be as easy as yours” Enjolras says “You just sleep, and run and eat and you don’t have to worry about anything”

The dog just looks at him as indignant as a dog can look because that’s a lie. 

Grantaire worries about so many things he doesn’t understand that he thinks he’s going crazy. 

He worries when it’s late at night and Enjolras is having a nightmare and he wakes up crying. 

He worries when Enjolras doesn’t come at home just to appear the next morning with someone who kisses him fully on the mouth, their bodies wearing absolutely nothing and  
the door in front of him closed for the first time. 

He worries when a couple of months later, said person doesn’t come back anymore. Enjolras is so broken hearted he doesn’t get up from the bed in days, not even for taking him for a walk. 

He worries, but he’s just a dog and he cannot speak so he does the best that he can -- he loves Enjolras unconditionally and hopes for the best. 

\- -

He’s burning. He’s dying. 

The sun is so close and yet... 

He dies alone. 

\- -

The silk slides softly in her body, purple against her pale skin. It’s like a river flowing all around her, one of her lovers had told her, and she finds the thought ridiculous. Her deep brown eyes look at the man that sleeps profoundly next to her and she can’t help how lonely she suddenly feels.

Enjolras doesn’t exist in this lifetime.

And Grantaire is a princess of a land forgotten by all the gods.

She wants to cry because it’s so ironic that it hurts. She is trapped – trapped by the sun, by the stupid Emperor who is at war, by the lovers she takes and leaves like they are nothing without her. 

(They are nothing even when they’re with her)

She is trapped in this body she shares when she needs to. 

And every time she looks at the night sky, Grantaire wishes to be free. 

 

(In high school, Enjolras chooses to do a History presentation about a powerful Asiatic woman who used to kill her lovers – the Emperor closest men- so she could maintain her power. He’s so fascinate by her that it almost hurts)

\- -

When they shot him, he doesn’t feel anything at all. 

\- - 

He finds Eponine in Australia. 

Here, she’s a surfer girl who works as a bartender and dances up in tables. 

Here, he defines himself as an adventure traveller who thought why the fuck not Australia? 

(He tells himself he isn’t looking for Enjolras.

He is)

When they look at each other, they just know. So Eponine takes the night off and Grantaire cancels his plans to go walk at the beach.

They end up talking for hours, with a few bottles of cheap wine in Eponine’s little flat. In this lifetime she’s beautiful and she is happy and loved except... 

“Sometimes I find Marius” she confesses him, her pretty blue eyes suddenly looking like a dark, empty sea. “We have got together a couple of times”

She doesn’t say anything more, but she doesn’t need to. 

He can hear it from the waves that swim in her eyes. 

_More often than not, we don’t._

Marius never remembers her. 

(He has never asked Enjolras if he does)

\- -

“I love you” Enjolras says and Grantaire thinks that she can see the words floating around the room written in golden. She instantly pulls him closer and Enjolras kisses her fully on the mouth, resting one hand in the little bump in Grantaire’s stomach. 

“I love you, too” she says back, after a while. 

They make love until the sun rises, and even then, they cannot let each other go. 

Grantaire thinks that this is what happiness must feel like. 

\--

When Enjolras passes in front of him, Grantaire doesn’t give him a second glance. 

\- -

Grantaire loves that this time it was Enjolras the one who find her. 

(She doesn’t remember everything, despite of what she might think)

But Grantaire hates when they fight like this because it’s not easy and it scares her to death to think she might lose her over something stupid. 

Because when Enjolras is this silent it means that she’s so angry that it inevitable leads to Grantaire saying something so fucking wrong that she’s not allowed in their room  
anymore. 

“Aren’t you going to say anything? Do you even care about what I feel?” she finally asks her venomously when she realises Enjolras hasn’t said a word about that bimbo that was a talking to her more close than necessary.

“Of course I care!” Enjolras says right away. “You know damn well that if I didn’t fucking care I wouldn’t be here putting up with your stupid dramatics acts of unnecessary jealousy!”

“Well, if you don’t want to be here nobody is forcing you to stay!” 

See, exactly like this. 

When Enjolras storms out of their apartment, she has no one to blame except herself. 

(They eventually make up and the sex is great and Grantaire doesn’t think it possible to love Enjolras even more – but she does)

\- -

He catches a glance of Enjolras when he’s walking at le jardin du Luxembourg one spring in Paris.

(He hates Paris because they’re never together when they’re here. 

Paris is no city of love to them and this time is not different)

When Grantaire sees him (and he just knows that’s Enjolras for the ache in his heart) he’s holding hands with a woman and two little kids are running around them. 

Grantaire thinks of coming closer but it’d be unfair to all of them. Enjolras seems happy after all, and he’s not going to interfere with that. 

He contents himself with watching the family at a prudent distance, cigarettes always at hand. 

They come here every Sunday and so does Grantaire. 

That’s it - until one day they don’t. 

Grantaire feels like dying. 

\- -

“Do you think I’m always meant to be chasing you?” 

Enjolras is caressing his cheek with his thumb, both of them cuddling on the couch. Grantaire doesn’t think before he speaks, he doesn’t realise until it’s late that he’s breaking their unspoken rule of not talking about it. 

But now that he has done it, he is not backing off. 

“I wonder sometimes if I have really found you, if you’re really you or if I have made you up in my mind” he says into Enjolras’ ear in a whisper, his nose buried in his neck  
breathing his essence.

“I wonder if this is the last time” he continues when he feels Enjolras’ hand squeezing his hand as an act of reassurance “because I know that I’ll never shine as bright as you and I’m afraid you are going to burn faster”

“And I know that you always feel like you need to save me. And how can I be so selfish to ask for another lifetime with you when you’re destined to greater things?”

“I love you” is all that Enjolras answerers. “And I know you’ll always find me”

\- -

Grantaire is a feather. 

Perhaps Enjolras could be the breeze. 

\- -

This time, Enjolras is more than his lover.

He’s his muse. 

Grantaire has painted him in all the murals of Delphi, his long blonde curls falling to his shoulders, his arms holding instruments or swords, eyes lost in the horizon. 

He has made statues of him that rest in the temples of the most important Greek cities. He has tried to immortalise the beauty of this man that’s nearly a boy. But he has failed, for no piece of art could ever do him justice. If he was a poet, he’d write him thousands of poems. 

“I don’t need any of that” Enjolras says. “What are statues of paintings after all? They’d crack under the thunder of Zeus if he so wished. No, I don’t need them because time will destroy them anyway. And I’m afraid this devotion you have for my beauty is going to angry the gods. What I need is something they cannot take away, even if your body has already fallen to the Hades”

“And what’s that?”

“Your love”

\- -

Once, he kills them both. 

It’s really dark and Grantaire’s driving because he offered to be the designated driver and he didn’t drink anything more than Coca-Cola -- but he’s seventeen and stupid and he hasn’t done this before but nothing wrong is going to happen, be easy. 

Enjolras is sleeping in the passenger seat after all their friends had insisted that they were going to get him drunk for the first time in his life. 

It is also the last. 

When the car hits them, Enjolras dies instantaneously. 

Grantaire is still conscious, dying slowly, watching how all their blood mix together. 

And if it wasn’t so tragic, it could be beautiful. 

\- -

It hurts to remember.

It hurts to forget. 

\- -

Grantaire wakes up in the forest to the sound of someone singing a sad song. 

He looks around and there’s no one but a little bird watching him and singing to him. 

He stays there for hours, listening. 

He doesn’t want to do this anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I want to thank you for reading! All kind of feedback is highly appreciated.  
> I want to apologise if there’s any mistake because, you see, I’m not a native English speaker.  
> This was inspired by this http://s2b2.livejournal.com/142934.html and the title is from an Ian Thomas poem.  
> I’m already working in the Enjolras’ one, so I think it’s going to be up soon.


End file.
